NASA’s pollution-tracking satellite will be launched by SpaceX

According to SpaceX, the Intelsat IS-40e mission will be launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station using the renowned Falcon 9 rocket.

The 119-minute launch window begins at 12:30 a.m. EDT, with a backup time scheduled for Saturday, April 8 at 12:29 a.m. EDT.

The 45th Weather Squadron is allowing a 90% opportunity of good launch forecast, with the only worries being takeoff winds and the cumulus cloud rule.

CRS-26, OneWeb Flight 16, and one Starlink have all been successfully launched by B1076, the first-stage booster.

The first-stage booster will separate and land on the droneship as the Falcon 9 launches the Intelsat IS-40e into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. a Gravitas Deficit that will be present in the Atlantic Ocean.

Acquiring some TEMPO for the mission.

The Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument will be housed on the Intelsat IS-40e satellite.

The first space-based instrument to track and monitor major air pollutants across North America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian oil sands to below Mexico City, according to NASA.

With support from the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the space agency and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) collaborated on the TEMPO mission.

The SAO described the TEMPO instrument as “the first ever space-based instrument to monitor air pollutants hourly across the North American continent during the day.” The TEMPO instrument is a UV-visible spectrometer.

The following types of information will be gathered: pollutants like ozone, nitrogen, dioxide, and others.

According to NASA, TEMPO will perform hourly monitoring of the major air pollutants, which is expected to revolutionize air quality forecasting.